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Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

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Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#121

Post by shubb »

valenterry wrote: post #106
Nextgrid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will always be pushed to get the most out of what is currently available in terms of technology & tooling, no matter of your niche Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. I'd say that if anything, the $$$ per unit of effort is much higher working for small…

> Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. But that's exactly what I'm saying! Just continue the thought: if CRUD is so easy, but money can be made then it will be automated away by frameworks or even commercial products. So less people will be needed and hence p…

CRUD is 'wierdly hard', in that 15 years ago, it was very easy to make a windows CRUD app in Visual Basic 6. An unskilled person could build such functionality at the same or faster speed than a quite skilled web developer.

Modern web appears to have made the simple hard. Where you could once just draw a GUI (a responsive GUI), now you need to know CSS, and a simple multi column layout in CSS is something that takes a beginner days to understand. Then you need to write javascript - but not simple javascript. You 'need' to use a framework like React which takes a newbie months to 'fully' understand.

What exactly do we get for all this new complexity?

This is a solved problem made unsolved.

There are a bunch of no-code or less-code solutions for this. Already basic ecomerce is achieved by just using these . But why not you app, front end dev reading this. Some will have good reasons, but many will not. I think you are writing it in react because you put a lot of effort into learning react and you are unable to even think of making a few low impact compromises and no-coding your next years work in a week. Why would an employee do that?

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#122

Post by taylodl »

The front end is much more difficult. Why? Because that's what the users see - it is the application as far as the users are concerned. Difficult in this context isn't referring to technical difficulty, it's the difficulty of having to deal with the end users and all the problems that entails. From a technical perspective the front end is also moving faster, so there's more churn and more things to keep up with. Finally, there's less research. Front end development hasn't benefited from decades of academic research. It's a mess.

The back end? That's classic computer science. Decades of research, many classes of problems solved, a much slower evolving landscape. That doesn't mean the back end is easy, but at least it's well-known and can be mastered.

Which should you do? That's entirely up to you. Some people enjoy the messiness of the front end and the constant technology churn. Some people prefer the stability of the technology stack on the back end and not having to deal so much with end users.

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#123

Post by k__ »

It depends.

If you write a small app that is only used by a few dozens to maybe hundreds of users, then the backend can be easier than frontend. You can simply code one backend and put it on a fast VM and be done with it.

If you need to scale to thousands or millions of users, things can get messy, because you need to scale horizontally, which leads you into distributed systems territory, which is quite complicated stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#124

Post by [deleted] »

nnoitra wrote: post #102
woutr_be wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that mean that both have the exact same responsibility? A bug in the FE, would essentially render the BE unusable, and therefore would cost a lot of money and time as well. For example; if Amazon's checkout button somehow broke, and prevent users from checking out, it would also cost a lot of money. EDIT: to give a more visual example, if Amazon changed their checkout button to a different color and style. I…

Much easier to fix a button then dive deep into why your algorithms which should work, don't work.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#126

Post by draven »

It seems to me you want something more stable, not something easier. Speaking as someone working mostly on backend (Scala codebase) but having to touch a Typescript codebase from time to time: backend is certainly not easier, but it feels way more stable to me and it's easier to keep current.

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#127

Post by littlecranky67 »

I've started developing websites in the 90s - when you developed on IE3, send them to Geocities over my 56k modem etc. I've been a web developer ever since, FullStack first of course, later when the BE/FE break happened I focused more on FE but still do Fullstack work, while in the last couple of years I contract as a FE dev only. My conclusion is: todays FE is harder than BE.

- You have to test your code not only on a single VM (like when using C# or Java), but on a multitude of browsers, on various screen resolutions (there are no FE projects today that can afford to not be responsive)

- Automated testing is hard; in Backend (or regular systems programming) you usually would test a single function/class by comparing its output. But the output of a Frontend is not HTML, its an interactive piece of pixel graphic which only makes sense to a human eye. Yes, there are HTML assertions, but they will not find bugs like hidden elements due to false CSS breakpoints. Yes, there are pixel-matching testing frameworks that make sure your output looks the same to the last pixel but practical application is almost impossible because

- There is too much change. Besides the framework churn in FE space everybody is aware of, UI is something immediately visible and critiqued to every end user and PO in the process. I have sat through a lot of sprint reviews where non-technical POs/PMs raised their feedback on the UI ("can we have the button in the other corner and in blue?"). Never ever in a sprint review did anybody critique my REST API definition, my internal DB layout or my choice of ORM. On top of that, fashion is a thing. You could easily have a rock-solid, slowly evolved Backend from the early 2000s running and actively selling to a customer. Try to sell any product with the look of a 2008 website to any customer today - good luck.

There is loads more reasons, and I do not say Backend is trivial or easy, but to me FE just requires more effort. I must admit, ever since the last 2 years I did no longer have to support IE11 - which took a big burden off my daily work.

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#128

Post by mtberatwork »

valenterry wrote: post #106
Nextgrid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will always be pushed to get the most out of what is currently available in terms of technology & tooling, no matter of your niche Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. I'd say that if anything, the $$$ per unit of effort is much higher working for small…

> Disagreed. Maybe in large companies that work at huge scales, but below that there's plenty of business value that can be delivered with what is essentially CRUD and there's still money to be made. But that's exactly what I'm saying! Just continue the thought: if CRUD is so easy, but money can be made then it will be automated away by frameworks or even commercial products. So less people will be needed and hence p…

> Just continue the thought: if CRUD is so easy, but money can be made then it will be automated away by frameworks or even commercial products. So less people will be needed and hence people will lose their jobs.

CRUD are just the basic backend operations for persisting data and frameworks provide the facilities to make this happen. Processing web forms via CRUD operations is just a subset of backend development. Companies hire software engineers to solve domain problems which are unique to the company and/or industry. Eventually things will get automated away where they can but there will always be new domain problems to work on for the foreseeable future.

> 25 years ago, you could earn a lot of money by simply creating basic websites for people. This has become much easier/faster to do now, but making a lot of money with it has gotten much harder as well.

No, 25 years ago no one was making money designing websites. In the late nineties, web sites were often just cobbled together by whomever in the company took an interest in the new medium. Also, aside from some outliers perhaps, no one was making the kind of salaries engineers can get these days.

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#129

Post by rokob »

When I was hiring for a new startup I asked my old boss how to hire frontend people because he was exceptional at both and had built great teams which were frontend focused.

He told me don’t fall into the trap of hiring frontend skills only. Hire software engineers who happen to really know JavaScript.

This has served me really well. Every aspect of applications that we build has needs to structure code, to collaborate in teams, to build abstraction, to ship with an acceptable level of brokenness, and to have mechanisms for continuous improvement.

I’ve worked in several frontend and backend codebases and they all had aspects of difficulty and toil. However talking to lots of people about this I find that certain parts of the stack work better for your personality and talents.

I used to think of frontend as lessor because the hard things seemed to be on the backend. But then I met high caliber JavaScript engineers.

It is sort of like abstract art. Great artists have a solid foundation and then choose their own path.

It is good to get a feel for both and see what resonates with you. Also spending time on the backend can give you empathy to make you better at the frontend; and vice versa.

Re: Ask HN: Is back end dev generally easier than front end?

#130

Post by dusted »

schwartzworld wrote: post #85
dusted wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at some point, one becomes exhausted from learning things that are so short lived that they're effectively useless the next year. There's a fatigue in knowing that what you're working hard to master today will be laughed at tomorrow, it makes you cynical, or at least tired.. It's not like that with most things in the world, learn math, the new stuff will only gradually creep in, the foundational concepts and ideas do…

> Learn React or Angular or whatever, and you'll have, if you're lucky the next two years to polish and make use of that knowledge before it goes out.. This is just a meme. React and angular aren't going anywhere. Especially React is too big to disappear. Even if it falls out of fashion, there would be 1000s of apps built in it that need maintenance. Whatever DOES end up replacing React is going to share more with it…

well, I didn't read it anywhere, just my personal experience from being in the industry, so if it's a meme, it's probably not without a reason. Also, I've personally suffered through multiple frameworks, anything I've learnt have been a waste of time, I have nothing to show for it, but some applications with outdated UIs, you're welcome to blame me for "chosing the wrong ones, just tell me a modern, currently popular UI framework that's existed for more than 10 years.
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